Happiest country to be old is Sweden, survey finds

Sweden is best country in the world in which to grow old, a new survey reveals today, closely followed by Norway and Germany, with Britain trailing behind in 13th place.

In the first global league table of its kind, the northern European norms of generous welfare and pensions, reliable transport and community spirit combined with other factors to give the region’s over-60 population the greatest quality of life.

Despite Britian’s universal pension and a climate only marginally less inhospitable than Scandinavia’s, the UK’s ranking suffered because of the shortage of buses and trains – a problem especially common in rural areas – and poor access to employment and education later in life. In those latter categories Britain came 24th.

Sir Richard Jolly, the development economist who advised the report, said: “This shows it’s not just pensions that count but a lot of other things. Germany does so much better than the UK though it is not that much richer as a country. If Britons have a place to move to when they get older it should be Germany.”

The Global Age Watch Index is designed to give governments around the world a benchmark by which to measure the success of their policies for the elderly.

Silvia Stefanoni, chief executive of HelpAge International, which devised the index with the United Nations, said: “The world is rapidly ageing – people over 60 years of age already exceed children under five, and by 2050 they will outnumber children under 15. However the issue of ageing is continually excluded from global and national agendas.”

The charity said the world’s rising ageing population was being ignored by policy-makers in many countries. The report sounded the alarm over the fastest ageing countries – Jordan, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Vietnam – where the number of old people will more than triple by 2050. All of them fell into the lower half of the ranking.

The index covers 89 per cent of the world’s older people population of 900 million in 91 countries.

It found that money, or gross domestic product per capita, isn’t everything when it comes to the wellbeing of the elderly. The G20 economies are spread across the index.

Neither does spectacular economic growth necessarily benefit the elderly. Brazil (31) and China (35) rank relatively high in the index, but India (73) and Russia (78) fare less well.

Poorer countries with a history of progressive social policies, such as Bolivia, Sri Lanka and Mauritius – the highest ranking African country – scored higher than might have be expected from the size of their economies.

There were no surprises about the worst place to be old. The index was propped up Afghanistan in 91st place. Neighbouring Pakistan was 89th.